The Case for Bernie - from an Expat

It's difficult sometimes to get perspective on how far our country has fallen.

- from - expat.

“ … in Germany most of the year.

Every year for more than three weeks in August, I travel to the US to visit family and friends.

just spent … three weeks in …Colorado.

I have a generous amount of paid vacation time,

mandated by the German government

(something Bernie supports, …).
By now most of us are familiar with what Sanders means when he calls himself a 'democratic socialist'.
He insists that the US, one of the wealthiest nations in the world,

can afford to provide its workers with paid vacation time, with

universal health care,

free college education

…

He knows that we have the wealth to improve our nation's infrastructure—

every time I return to the US, I'm horrified by how dilapidated this country has become.

… Republicans are committed to obstructing social progress. - … this attitude reflects just

how far we have fallen,

how far right our discourse has gone,

how deeply disconnected we are from the rest of the world,

Europeans, … view the US with a combination of

horror,

disgust ,

sympathy.

They fundamentally do not understand how we still do not have

single-payer health care,

strong public education - through specialty training or university education and beyond,

unemployment benefits,

job-placement

paid retraining services,

paid parental leave,

pensions,

and more (much more!). - - …
it should be obvious to all that without a fundamental change of the role of

Wall Street and corporate power in our nation,

none of the social values (we) should support will be realized.
So when you tell me that these "socialist" values are not realistic,

and that most Americans won't vote for them,

I'll tell you that the only way to bring this country back from the abyss the right has taken us is to fight for these values and support the candidates that best represent them.

The choice is obvious."

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From :

https://plus.google.com/+YASalsaDetroit/posts

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David Bee originally shared to Bernie Sanders For U.S. President! #mydailybernie:

The graphic below is from another source: here ☛ https://goo.gl/L7m80m

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Data source: UNICEF

American children are on average worse off than children in Western Europe

barely better off than their counterparts in the Baltic states and the former Yugoslavia,

- United Nation’s Children's Fund (UNICEF) –

The report, which compares kids in 29 Western countries,

measures well-being across five metrics:

material well-being,

health and safety,

behaviors and risks,

housing and environment,

education.

It ranks the United States in the bottom third on all five measures

and particularly low on education and poverty.

The United States is joined at the bottom by “emerging” European economies,

-

As noted earlier, one of the report's more alarming findings for the United States

is the degree to which income inequality has increased the population of children who grow up in relative poverty .

Economists rate the U.S. economy as one of the most unequal in the Western world.

… the report, means that significant numbers of American children are so much worse off than the average Greek or Slovakian child as to bring the overall U.S. average beneath those other, relatively less wealthy and developed countries.

Here's a chart

showing the rankings, overall and across the five key metrics, for 29 countries:

-

-

Data: UNICEF

… the United States did do well on some comparative metrics.

( ? ) American kids get more exercise than almost any others studied in the report,

but they’re still, by far, the most overweight.

(Chalk that up to American calorie consumption, which is also one of the world’s highest.)

American kids also are the least likely to drink alcohol –

a finding that matches long-standing alcohol consumption patterns of American adults.

According to the World Health Organization, Americans ages 15 and up have consumed far less alcohol than their counterparts abroad for decades.

We want change in our lives, in
our neighborhoods, in our everyday reality.

We want a change which can affect
the entire world, since global interdependence calls for global answers to
local problems.

The globalization of hope, a hope
which springs up from peoples and takes root among the poor, must replace the
globalization of exclusion and indifference!

… I would like to speak of change
in another sense.

Positive change, a change which
is good for us, a change – we can say – which is redemptive.

… : in my different meetings, in
my different travels, I have sensed an expectation, a longing, a yearning for
change, in people throughout the world.

Even within that ever smaller
minority which believes that the present system is beneficial, there is a
widespread sense of dissatisfaction and even despondency.

Many people are hoping for a
change capable of releasing them from the bondage of individualism and the
despondency it spawns.

Time, … seems to be running out;
we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common
home.

Today, the scientific community
realizes what the poor have long told us:

harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is
being done to the ecosystem.

The earth, entire peoples and
individual persons are being brutally punished.

And behind all this pain, death
and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called “the dung
of the devil”.

An unfettered pursuit of money
rules.

The service of the common good is
left behind.

Once capital
becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions,

once greed for
money presides over the entire socioeconomic system,

it ruins
society,

it condemns and
enslaves men and women,

it destroys
human fraternity,

it sets people
against one another …

it … puts at
risk our common home.

-

I do not need to go on describing
the evil effects of this subtle dictatorship: you are well aware of them. Nor
is it enough to point to the structural causes of today’s social and
environmental crisis.

We are suffering from an excess
of diagnosis, which at times leads us to multiply words and to revel in
pessimism and negativity.

…

-

What can I do, as collector of
paper, old clothes or used metal, a recycler, about all these problems if I
barely make enough money to put food on the table?

What can I do as a craftsman, a
street vendor, a trucker, a downtrodden worker, if I don’t even enjoy workers’
rights?

What can I do, a farmwife, a
native woman, a fisher who can hardly fight the domination of the big
corporations?

What can I do from my little
home, my shanty, my hamlet, my settlement, when I daily meet with
discrimination and marginalization?

What can be done by

those students,

those young
people,

those activists,

those
missionaries

who come to my neighborhood with
their hearts full of hopes and dreams, but without any real solution for my
problems?

A lot! They can do a lot.

You,

the lowly,

the exploited,

the poor and
underprivileged,

can do, and are doing, a lot.

I would even say that the future
of humanity is in great measure in your own hands, …

Don’t lose heart!

-

2. …

… changes of structure which are not
accompanied by a sincere conversion of mind and heart sooner or later end up in
bureaucratization, corruption and failure. …

Each of us is just one part of a
complex and differentiated whole, interacting in time:

peoples who struggle to find
meaning, a destiny, and to live with dignity, to “live well”.

… you carry out your work
inspired by fraternal love, which you show in opposing social injustice.

When we look into the eyes of the
suffering,

when we see the faces of

the endangered campesino,

the poor
laborer,

the downtrodden
native,

the homeless
family,

the persecuted
migrant,

the unemployed
young person,

the exploited
child,

…

…. when we think of all those
names and faces, our hearts break because of so much sorrow and pain. And we
are deeply moved…. We are moved because “we have seen and heard” not a cold
statistic but the pain of a suffering humanity, our own pain, our own flesh. …

-

… You, dear brothers and sisters,
often work on little things, in local situations, amid forms of injustice which
you do not simply accept but actively resist, standing up to an idolatrous
system which excludes, debases and kills

-

… We do not love concepts or
ideas; we love people…

Commitment, true commitment, is
born of the love of men and women, of children and the elderly, of peoples and
communities… of names and faces which fill our hearts.

From those seeds of hope
patiently sown in the forgotten fringes of our planet,

from those seedlings of a
tenderness which struggles to grow amid the shadows of exclusion, great trees
will spring up, great groves of hope to give oxygen to our world.

-

… It is essential that, along with the defense
of their legitimate rights, peoples and their social organizations be able to
construct a humane alternative to a globalization which excludes.

You are sowers of change.

May God grant you the courage,
joy, perseverance and passion to continue sowing.

Be assured that sooner or later
we will see its fruits.

-

3. Lastly, I would like us all to
consider some important tasks for the present historical moment, since we
desire a positive change for the benefit of all our brothers and sisters.

… We desire change enriched by
the collaboration of governments, popular movements and other social forces.

…

I would like, … to propose three
great tasks which demand a decisive and shared contribution from popular
movements:

-

3.1 The first task is to put the
economy at the service of peoples.

Human beings and nature must not be at
the service of money.

Let us say NO to an economy of
exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service.

That economy
kills.

That economy
excludes.

That economy
destroys Mother Earth.

The economy should not be a
mechanism for accumulating goods,

but rather the proper
administration of our common home.

This entails a commitment to care
for that home and to the fitting distribution of its goods among all.

…

A just economy must create the conditions for
everyone

to be able to
enjoy a childhood without want,

to develop their
talents when young,

to work with
full rights during their active years …

to enjoy a
dignified retirement as they grow older.

It is an economy where human
beings, in harmony with nature, structure the entire system of production and
distribution in such a way that the abilities and needs of each individual find
suitable expression in social life.

…

The available resources in our
world,

the fruit of the
intergenerational labors of peoples …

the gifts of creation,

more than suffice for the
integral development of “each man and the whole man”.

… There exists a system with
different aims.

A system which, while
irresponsibly accelerating the pace of production,

while using industrial and
agricultural methods which damage Mother Earth in the name of “productivity”,
continues to deny many millions of our brothers and sisters their most
elementary economic, social and cultural rights.

This system runs counter to the
plan of Jesus.

-

Working for a just distribution
of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy.

It is a moral obligation.

…

It is about giving to the poor
and to peoples what is theirs by right.

The universal destination of
goods is not a figure of speech found in the Church’s social teaching.

It is a reality prior to private
property.

Property, especially when it
affects natural resources, must always serve the needs of peoples.

…

It is not enough to let a few
drops fall whenever the poor shake a cup which never runs over by itself.

…

-

3.2. The second task is to unite
our peoples on the path of peace and justice.

The world’s peoples want to be
artisans of their own destiny.

They want to advance peacefully
towards justice.

They do not want forms of
tutelage or interference by which those with greater power subordinate those
with less.

They want

their culture,

their language,

their social
processes …

their religious
traditions to be respected.

No actual or established power
has the right to deprive peoples of the full exercise of their sovereignty. …

Despite the progress made, there
are factors which still threaten this equitable human development and restrict
the sovereignty of the countries of the “greater country” and other areas of
our planet.

The new colonialism takes on
different faces.

At times it appears as the
anonymous influence of mammon:

corporations,

loan agencies,

…“free trade”
treaties,

… the imposition
of measures of “austerity”

… always tighten the belt of
workers and the poor.

At other times, under the noble
guise of battling corruption, the narcotics trade and terrorism –

grave evils of our time which
call for coordinated international action –

we see states being saddled with
measures which have little to do with the resolution of these problems and
which not infrequently worsen matters.

Similarly, the monopolizing of
the communications media, which would impose alienating examples of consumerism
and a certain cultural uniformity,

is another one of the forms taken
by the new colonialism.

It is ideological colonialism. …

poor countries are often treated
like “parts of a machine, cogs on a gigantic wheel”.

-

Every significant action carried
out in one part of the planet has universal, ecological, social and cultural
repercussions.

Even crime and violence have
become globalized.

…

Colonialism, both old and new,

which reduces poor countries to
mere providers of raw material and cheap labor, engenders violence, poverty,
forced migrations and all the evils which go hand in hand with these, …

That is inequality,

… inequality generates a violence
which no police, military, or intelligence resources can control.

Let us say NO to forms of
colonialism old and new.

Let us say YES to the encounter
between peoples and cultures.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

-

3.3. The third task, perhaps the
most important facing us today, is to defend Mother Earth.

Our common home is being pillaged, laid
waste and harmed with impunity.

Cowardice in defending it is a
grave sin.

We see with growing
disappointment how one international summit after another takes place without
any significant result.

There exists a clear, definite
and pressing ethical imperative to implement what has not yet been done. We
cannot allow certain interests – interests which are global but not universal –

to take over,

to dominate
states and international organizations, …

to continue
destroying creation.

People and their movements are
called to cry out, to mobilize and to demand – peacefully, but firmly – that
appropriate and urgently-needed measures be taken.

I ask you, in the name of God, to
defend Mother Earth.

I have duly addressed this issue
in my Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’.

-

4. In conclusion, I would like to
repeat: the future of humanity does not lie solely in the hands of great
leaders, the great powers and the elites.

It is fundamentally in the hands
of peoples and in their ability to organize.

It is in their hands, which can
guide with humility and conviction this process of change.

I am with you.

Let us together say from the
heart:

no family
without lodging,

no rural worker without
land,

no laborer
without rights,

no people
without sovereignty,

no individual
without dignity,

no child without
childhood,

no young person
without a future,

no elderly
person without a venerable old age.

Keep up your struggle and,
please, take great care of Mother Earth.

I pray for you and with you, and
I ask God our Father to accompany you and to bless you, to fill you with his
love and defend you on your way by granting you in abundance that strength
which keeps us on our feet: that strength is hope, the hope which does not
disappoint.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

July
15, 2015 - Are you still eating sushi or any seafood from the Pacific
Ocean?

Well you might want to reconsider after reading this article.

When it comes to environmental disasters, the nuclear fallout at
Fukushima has to be amongst the worst that has happened in the past few
decades.

Andrew Kishner, founder of http://www.nuclearcrimes.org has
put together a great resource of information that tracks what has been
developing over time in Fukushima as it relates to the nuclear incident.